Description: The facial disc is pale greyish-brown with some indistinct rufous concentric lines. Eyebrows are whitish, while the eyes are yellow. The cere is yellowish-grey and the bill yellowish-horn with a slight greenish tint. The crown and upperparts are dusky cinnamon-brown to warm brown, with the crown having tiny whitish flecks and the nape with prominent fake eye-spots (occipital face). The mantle and back are plain warm brown, and the wing-coverts have some pale speckles.
Flight feathers are dark brown, with whitish spots on each web, forming pale bars across the opened wing. The wing near the wrist is whitish below. The tail is dark brown with 3-4 visible broken bars of relatively large, whitish spots.
There is a rounded whitish area around the throat, bordered above by a narrow rufous band, and on the sides by rufous-brown mottling forming patches with a few pale spots. The rest of the underparts are off-white with buffish-rufous streaking on the flanks.The tarsi are feathered, and the toes are bristled and yellowish. Claws are horn with darker tips.

Habits: The Least Pygmy Owl is partly diurnal, but most active at dusk and dawn.

Voice: The song of the male is a high, hollow double not, somewhat drawn out and repeated at intervals of several seconds - hew-hew, hew-hew, hew-hew...

Hunting & Food: Feeds mainly on insects, but also takes small vertebrates.

Breeding: The breeding habits of the Least Pygmy Owl are little known. Likely nests in abandoned holes of woodpeckers in tree trunks and larger branches.

Habitat: Evergreen rainforest and forest edge with a preference for primary forest, in tropical and subtropical climates. Ranges from sea-level up to 800m elevation in southeast Brazil, reportedly up to 1000m in other areas.

Distribution: East Brazil from southeast Bahia south to Santa Catarina, east to Minas Gerais, south Mato Grosso, Paraná and adjacent eastern Paraguay, and perhaps northeast Argentina.

Distribution of the Least Pygmy Owl Glaucidium minutissimum

Status: Uncertain, found to be locally not rare in region between Rio de Janeiro and Santa Catarina. Probably threatened by deforestation.